Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

586 FUTURE PLANS.wise concluded to send in a capitulation and was placed underAbisares' authority.The proper arrangements were made forthe payment of tribute by both.Alexander then returned to the Hydaspes, where sometime was spent in repairing the damage done by the floods toBucephala and Nieaea, whose new and hastily built walls hadbeen unable to resist the overflow and rapid current of theriver. They were now made more solid and substantial. Heretoo he found reinforcements from Greece, consisting of sixthousand cavalry and thirty thousand infantry, brought byHarpalus. There were also twenty-five thousand panopliesof complete armor, and many medicines, the latter extremelynecessary. Had he sooner received these reinforcements andsupplieshe might, it is thought, have persuaded the army toadvance across the Hyphasis.But though Alexander, as the historians allege, had in thisretreat suffered the most cruel disappointment which everbefell him, when he had accepted the inevitable, he turnedhis mind to utilizing the conquests he had already made, andto consolidating his empire with as much energy as he coiddpossibly have put into the conquest of the rest of India.now proposed to carry out his original scheme of movingdown to the Indus and to reduce the people along the lowercourse of this river, and head back to Babylon along thecoast. He had heard that some tribes near the Indus, especiallythe Mallians and Oxydracians, were ready to resist himand unless the rivers, of which he held the head waters, weremade absolutely his so far as the sea, his conquests at theirsource would be held on slight tenure. And, as always, partof his plan was to found other cities and carry with him theHellenizing influences which he had already spread so far.Alexander concluded to return by descending the Hydaspes,which empties into the Aoesines, and thence through theHe